List
Readings 2024 Best Sellers
100 books Discoverable by Booko Admin
https://www.readings.com.au/news/the-100-bestselling-books-of-2024#
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Intermezzo (Special edition hardback)
Sally Rooney · 2024
Special edition featuring endpapers and exclusive short story by the author. From the author of the multimillion-copy bestseller Normal People, an exquisitely moving story about grief, love and family. Aside from the fact that they are brothers, Peter and Ivan Koubek seem to have little in common. Peter is a Dublin lawyer in his thirties - successful, competent and apparently unassailable. But in the wake of their father's death, he's medicating himself to sleep and struggling to manage his relationships with two very different women - his enduring first love Sylvia, and Naomi, a college student for whom life is one long joke. Ivan is a twenty-two-year-old competitive chess player. He has always seen himself as socially awkward, a loner, the antithesis of his glib elder brother. Now, in the early weeks of his bereavement, Ivan meets Margaret, an older woman emerging from her own turbulent past, and their lives become rapidly and intensely intertwined. For two grieving brothers and the people they love, this is a new interlude - a period of desire, despair and possibility - a chance to find out how much one life might hold inside itself without breaking.
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The Season
Helen Garner · 2024
Garner's first new work in a decade is a tender portrayal of the relationship between grandmother and grandson, and of that moment on the cusp of adulthood when a boy is both child and man. I pull up at the kerb. I love this park they train in. I must have walked the figure-of-eight around its ovals hundreds of times, at dawn, winter and summer, to throw the ball for Dozer, our red heeler, but he's buried now, in the backyard, under the crepe myrtle near the chook pen. The boy jumps out with his footy and trots away, bouncing it. Boy? Look at him. He's five foot eleven. The last of my three grandkids. This year he's in the Under 16s. It's footy season in Melbourne, and Helen Garner is following her grandson's suburban team. She turns up not only at every game (give or take), but at every training session, shivering on the sidelines in the dark, fascinated by the spectacle. She's a passionate Western Bulldogs supporter (with a rather shaky grasp of the rules) and a great admirer of the players and the epic theatre of the game. But this is something more than that. It is a chance to connect with her youngest grandchild, to be close to him in his last moments as a child and in his headlong rush into manhood. To witness his triumphs and defeats, to fear for his safety in battle, to gasp and to cheer for the team as it fights its way towards the finals. Garner's sharp eye, wit and warm humour bring the team and the season to life, as she documents this pivotal moment, both as part of the story and as silent witness. It's a reflection on masculinity, on the nobility, grace and grit of team spirit and the game's power to enthrall. PRAISE- 'One of Australia's foremost authors, admired by writers as different as Raymond Carver and Elizabeth Jolley.' Independent 'Not long ago I read Helen Garner for the first time and was so stunned that I wanted to run around the block; how strange, how wonderful, that a book can still make me feel that way.' Rumaan Alam 'There are very few writers that I admire more than Helen Garner.' David Nicholls 'A voice of great honesty and energy.' Anne Enright
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Juice
Tim Winton · 2024
An epic novel of determination, survival, and the limits of the human spirit. This is Tim Winton as you've never read him before. Two fugitives, a man and a child, drive all night across a stony desert. As dawn breaks, they roll into an abandoned mine site. From the vehicle they survey a forsaken place - middens of twisted iron, rusty wire, piles of sun-baked trash. They're exhausted, traumatised, desperate now. But as a refuge, this is the most promising place they've seen. The child peers at the field of desolation. The man thinks to himself, this could work. Problem is, they're not alone. So begins a searing, propulsive journey through a life whose central challenge is not simply a matter of survival, but of how to maintain human decency as everyone around you falls ever further into barbarism.
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Orbital
Samantha Harvey · 2024
Six astronauts rotate in their spacecraft contemplating the world below Six astronauts rotate in their spacecraft contemplating the world below 'A slim, profound study of intimate human fears set against epic vistas' GUARDIAN 'Stunning... An uplifting book' SUNDAY TIMES A team of astronauts in the International Space Station collect meteorological data, conduct scientific experiments and test the limits of the human body. But mostly they observe. Together they watch their silent blue planet, circling it sixteen times, spinning past continents and cycling through seasons, taking in glaciers and deserts, the peaks of mountains and the swells of oceans. Endless shows of spectacular beauty witnessed in a single day. Yet although separated from the world they cannot escape its constant pull. News reaches them of the death of a mother, and with it comes thoughts of returning home. They look on as a typhoon gathers over an island and people they love, in awe of its magnificence and fearful of its destruction. The fragility of human life fills their conversations, their fears, their dreams. So far from earth, they have never felt more part - or protective - of it. They begin to ask, what is life without earth? What is earth without humanity?
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All Fours
Miranda July · 2024
The New York Times bestselling author of The First Bad Man returns with an irreverently sexy, tender, hilarious and literary novel about a woman upending her life A semi-famous artist announces her plan to drive cross-country from LA to NY. Thirty minutes after leaving her husband and child at home, she spontaneously exits the freeway, beds down in a nondescript motel and immerses herself in a temporary reinvention that turns out to be the start of an entirely different journey.Miranda July's second novel confirms the brilliance of her unique approach to fiction. With July's wry voice, perfect comic timing, unabashed curiosity about human intimacy and palpable delight in pushing boundaries, All Fours tells the story of one woman's quest for a new kind of freedom. Part absurd entertainment, part tender reinvention of the sexual, romantic and domestic life of a 45-year-old female artist, All Fours transcends expectations while excavating our beliefs about life lived as a woman. Once again, July hijacks the familiar and turns it into something new and thrillingly, profoundly alive.
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Before the Coffee Gets Cold
Geoffrey Trousselot · 2019
In a small back alley in Tokyo, there is a café which has been serving carefully brewed coffee for more than one hundred years. But this coffee shop offers its customers a unique experience: the chance to travel back in time. In Before the Coffee Gets Cold, we meet four visitors, each of whom is hoping to make use of the café's time-travelling offer, in order to: confront the man who left them, receive a letter from their husband whose memory has been taken by early onset Alzheimer's, to see their sister one last time, and to meet the daughter they never got the chance to know. But the journey into the past does not come without risks: customers must sit in a particular seat, they cannot leave the café, and finally, they must return to the present before the coffee gets cold ... Toshikazu Kawaguchi's beautiful, moving story explores the age-old question: what would you change if you could travel back in time? More importantly, who would you want to meet, maybe for one last time?
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The Bee Sting
Paul Murray · 2024
Irresistibly funny, wise and thought-provoking, The Bee Sting is a tour de force about family, fortune, and the struggle to be a good person when the world is falling apart The Barnes family is in trouble. Dickie's once-lucrative car dealership is going under, and while his wife is frantically selling off her jewellery on eBay, he's busy building an apocalypse-proof bunker in the woods. Meanwhile their teenage daughter is veering off the rails, in thrall to a toxic friendship, and her little brother is falling into the black hole of the internet... Where did it all go wrong? The present is in crisis but the causes lie deep in the past. How long can this unhappy family wait before they have to face the truth? And if the story has already been written, is there still time to find a happy ending?
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Butter
Asako Yuzuki · 2024
The cult Japanese bestseller about a female gourmet cook and serial killer and the journalist intent on cracking her case, inspired by a true story. There are two things that I can simply not tolerate: feminists and margarine. Gourmet cook Manako Kajii sits in Tokyo Detention Centre convicted of the serial murders of lonely businessmen, who she is said to have seduced with her delicious home cooking. The case has captured the nation's imagination but Kajii refuses to speak with the press, entertaining no visitors. That is, until journalist Rika Machida writes a letter asking for her recipe for beef stew and Kajii can't resist writing back. Rika, the only woman in her news office, works late each night, rarely cooking more than ramen. As the visits unfold between her and the steely Kajii, they are closer to a masterclass in food than journalistic research. Rika hopes this gastronomic exchange will help her soften Kajii but it seems that she might be the one changing. With each meal she eats, something is awakening in her body, might she and Kaji have more in common than she once thought? Inspired by the real case of the convicted con woman and serial killer, "The Konkatsu Killer", Asako Yuzuki's Butter is a vivid, unsettling exploration of misogyny, obsession, romance and the transgressive pleasures of food in Japan.
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Good Material
Dolly Alderton · 2024
Every relationship has one beginning. This one has two endings. Andy loves Jen. Jen loved Andy. And he can't work out why she stopped. Now he is. . . 1. Without a home 2. Waiting for his stand-up career to take off 3. Wondering why everyone else around him seems to have grown up while he wasn't looking Set adrift on the sea of heartbreak at a time when everything he thought he knew about women, and flat-sharing, and his friendships has transformed beyond recognition, Andy clings to the idea of solving the puzzle of their broken relationship. Because if he can find the answer to that, then maybe Jen can find her way back to him. Andy still has a lot to learn, not least his ex-girlfriend's side of the story.
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RecipeTin Eats: Tonight
Nagi Maehashi · 2024
DINNERS for every night of the week from Australia's favourite cook Australia's favourite home cook, Nagi Maehashi, is back to solve the perennial problem of what's for dinner tonight ... and every night. Following on from her record-breaking first cookbook, Dinner, Nagi brings us Tonight with more than 150 brand-new foolproof, flavour-packed recipes, 800 variations on those recipes and 3000 possible combinations that match formulas (including the world-famous Charlie sauce) with different ingredients. There are crave-worthy crowd-pleasers - try slow-baked Italian meatballs in a rich tomato sauce with bubbling melted cheese or fall-apart Asian chicken cooked in a sticky-sweet soy glaze. Some dinners can be cooked in 20 minutes, and others can be made using only pantry staples. For high-impact guest-impressing, turn to Sunday suppers - the Vietnamese pulled pork is a festival of flavour - while the sweet chapter delivers on the promise of maximum decadence. With a stunning photo and link to a how-to video for each recipe - and plenty of guest appearances from Australia's most loved golden retriever, Dozer! - this is a book for every Australian kitchen, for every level of cooking ability, for every budget, for every set of taste buds, and for every single night of the week.
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Taboo
Hannah Ferguson · 2024
The no-bullshit, no-frills guide to your twenties, from Cheek Media Co. Founder and Bite Back author, Hannah Ferguson. Weaving deeply personal stories with spot-on opinions and advice about sex, friendship, family, career and beyond, this is Dolly Alderton's Everything I Know About Love meets Clare Bowditch's Your Own Kind of Girl for the next generation. A vulnerable exploration of modern womanhood that weaves deeply personal stories with opinions and advice on sex, friendship, family, career and beyond. This part-memoir, part feminist-manifesto meets women where they are and as they are. Hannah exposes and celebrates the messy, honest and insular parts of ourselves in a book designed to feel like a late-night conversation with your best friend - one that will make you laugh, cry and that you'll never want to end.
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Ottolenghi COMFORT
Yotam Ottolenghi, Helen Goh · 2024
Ottolenghi's first brand-new major cookbook since the era-defining Ottolenghi SIMPLE and Ottolenghi FLAVOUR. With over 100 evocative, irresistible recipes alongside stories of childhood and home. This is comfort food, Ottolenghi-style. In his much-anticipated new book, Yotam Ottolenghi brings his inspiring, flavour-forward approach to comfort cooking, delivering new classics that taste of home. A bowl of pasta becomes Caramelised Onion Orecchiette with Hazelnuts & Crispy Sage, a warming soup is Cheesy Bread Soup with Savoy Cabbage & Cavolo Nero, and a plate of mash is transformed into Garlicky Aligot Potato with Leeks & Thyme. Weaving memories of childhood and travel with over 100 irresistible recipes, Ottolenghi COMFORT is a celebration of food and home - of the connections we make as we cook, and pass on from generation to generation.
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Prophet Song (Man Booker prize 2023)
Paul Lynch · 2024
'Paul Lynch is peerless' Donal Ryan, author of Strange Flowers An Irish Times 'Book to Look Forward to in 2023' A fearless portrait of a society on the brink as a mother faces a terrible choice, from an internationally award-winning author On a dark, wet evening in Dublin, scientist and mother-of-four Eilish Stack answers her front door to find the GNSB on her step. Two officers from Ireland's newly formed secret police are here to interrogate her husband, a trade unionist. Ireland is falling apart. The country is in the grip of a government turning towards tyranny and Eilish can only watch helplessly as the world she knew disappears. When first her husband and then her eldest son vanish, Eilish finds herself caught within the nightmare logic of a collapsing society. How far will she go to save her family? And what or who is she willing to leave behind? Exhilarating, terrifying and propulsive, Prophet Song is a work of breathtaking originality, offering a devastating vision of a country at war and a deeply human portrait of a mother's fight to hold her family together.
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We Solve Murders
Richard Osman · 2024
With the heart and humour of The Thursday Murder Club combined with the international mystery of The Da Vinci Code, welcome to the blockbusting new series from the biggest new fiction author of the decade, Richard Osman. The first in a new series from the record-breaking phenomenon and globally bestselling author Richard Osman, starring a brand-new detective duo.
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Small Things Like These
Claire Keegan · 2022
**'Exquisite.' Damon Galgut 'Masterly.' The Times 'Miraculous.' Herald 'Astonishing.' Colm Toibin 'Stunning.' Sunday Independent 'Absolutely beautiful.' Douglas Stuart** A Book of the Year in The Times and The New Statesman It is 1985, in an Irish town. During the weeks leading up to Christmas, Bill Furlong, a coal and timber merchant, faces into his busiest season. As he does the rounds, he feels the past rising up to meet him - and encounters the complicit silences of a people controlled by the Church. 'A genuine once-in-a-generation writer.' The Times '[A] snowglobe of a story that fits a whole bustling, striving, yearning world into 114 finely wrought pages.' Sunday Times 'Powerful and affecting and very timely . . . deeply moving.' Hilary Mantel 'Stunning . . . A haunting, hopeful masterpiece.' Sinead Gleeson 'Remarkable . . . Truly exquisite.' Daily Telegraph 'A restrained and intensely moral book, full of hope and love.' Observer 'Marvellous - exact and icy and loving all at once.' Sarah Moss
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Tell Me Everything
Elizabeth Strout · 2024
A hopeful, healing novel about new friendships, old loves, and the very human desire to leave a mark on the world - from the Pulitzer Prize-winning, Booker Prize shortlisted author of My Name is Lucy Barton It's autumn in Maine, and the town lawyer Bob Burgess has become enmeshed in an unfolding murder investigation, defending a lonely, isolated man accused of killing his mother. He has also fallen into a deep and abiding friendship with the acclaimed writer, Lucy Barton, who lives down the road in a house by the sea with her ex-husband, William. Together, Lucy and Bob go on walks and talk about their lives, their fears and regrets, and what might have been. Lucy, meanwhile, is finally introduced to the iconic Olive Kitteridge, now living in a retirement community on the edge of town. Together, they spend afternoons in Olive's apartment, telling each other stories. Stories about people they have known - "unrecorded lives," Olive calls them - reanimating them, and, in the process, imbuing their lives with meaning. Brimming with empathy and pathos, TELL ME EVERYTHING is Elizabeth Strout operating at the height of her powers, illuminating the ways in which our relationships keep us afloat. As Lucy says, "Love comes in so many different forms, but it is always love."
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Question 7
Richard Flanagan · 2024
Beginning at a love hotel by Japan's Inland Sea and ending by a river in Tasmania, Question 7 is about the choices we make about love and the chain reaction that follows. By way of H. G. Wells and Rebecca West's affair through 1930s nuclear physics to Flanagan's father working as a slave labourer near Hiroshima when the atom bomb is dropped, this genre-defying daisy chain of events reaches fission when Flanagan as a young man finds himself trapped in a rapid on a wild river not knowing if he is to live or to die. At once a love song to his island home and to his parents, this hypnotic melding of dream, history, literature, place and memory is about how reality is never made by realists and how our lives so often arise out of the stories of others and the stories we invent about ourselves.
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Praiseworthy
Alexis Wright · 2023
Winner of the 2024 Miles Franklin Literary Award Winner of the 2024 Stella Prize Winner of the 2024 ALS Gold Medal Praiseworthy is an epic set in the north of Australia, told with the richness of language and scale of imagery for which Alexis Wright has become renowned. In a small town dominated by a haze cloud, which heralds both an ecological catastrophe and a gathering of the ancestors, a crazed visionary seeks out donkeys as the solution to the global climate crisis and the economic dependency of the Aboriginal people. His wife seeks solace from his madness in following the dance of butterflies and scouring the internet to find out how she can seek repatriation for her Aboriginal/Chinese family to China. One of their sons, called Aboriginal Sovereignty, is determined to commit suicide. The other, Tommyhawk, wishes his brother dead so that he can pursue his dream of becoming white and powerful. This is a novel which pushes allegory and language to its limits, a cry of outrage against oppression and disadvantage, and a fable for the end of days. Accompanied by new editions of Wright's classic novels, Carpentaria and The Swan Book, to be released by Giramondo in May 2023. Also Winner of the 2023 Queensland Literary Awards: The University of Queensland Fiction Book Award
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Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow
Gabrielle Zevin · 2023
Stylish and open-hearted, this is a very different kind of love story, elevated and energised by being set in the world of creativity and video gaming * RADIO 2 BOOKCLUB PICK * NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * JIMMY FALLON BOOK CLUB PICK * GRAZIA SUMMER READING PICK * 'I just love this book and I hope you love it too' JOHN GREEN, TikTok 'I recently read this book and loved it ' CELESTE NG, Washington Post This is not a romance, but it is about love Two kids meet in a hospital gaming room in 1987. One is visiting her sister, the other is recovering from a car crash. The days and months are long there. Their love of video games becomes a shared world -- of joy, escape and fierce competition. But all too soon that time is over. When the pair spot each other eight years later in a crowded train station, they are catapulted back to that moment. The spark is immediate, and together they get to work on what they love - making games to delight, challenge and immerse players, finding an intimacy in digital worlds that eludes them in their real lives. Their collaborations make them superstars. This is the story of the perfect worlds Sadie and Sam build, the imperfect world they live in, and of everything that comes after success- Money. Fame. Duplicity. Tragedy. Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow takes us on a dazzling imaginative quest as it examines the nature of identity, creativity, disability, failure, the redemptive possibilities in play and, above all, our need to connect- to be loved and to love. 'I cannot recommend it highly enough' HANK GREEN, Instagram 'A beautifully wrought saga of human connection and the creative process, of love and all of its complicated levels' ERIN MORGENSTERN, author of The Night Circus 'You don't have to be a gamer to enjoy this story about two brilliant young game designers growing famous, then growing apart' Observer 'A novel that treasures the act of play and holds it sacred' Guardian 'You needn't be a gamer to be charmed by this immersive tale of friendship, creativity and life's messy wonders' Mail on Sunday ' An engrossing, delightful novel' Financial Times
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Long Island
Colm Tóibín · 2024
A novel of enormous wit and profound emotional resonance from one of the world's finest writers. Eilis Lacey is Irish, married to Tony Fiorello, a plumber and one of four Italian American brothers, all of whom live in neighboring houses on a cul-de-sac in Lindenhurst, Long Island, with their wives and children and Tony's parents. It is the spring of 1976 and Eilis, now in her forties with two teenage children, has no one to rely on in this still-new country. One day, an Irishman comes to the door asking for Eilis by name. He tells her that his wife is pregnant with Tony's child and that when the baby is born, he will not raise it but will leave it with her. Eilis has choices to make, and what she chooses to do after this shattering news make this one of Toibin's most riveting and emotional novels to date.
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James
Percival Everett · 2024
'Percival Everett is a giant of American letters, and James is a canon-shatteringly great book' - Hernan Diaz, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Trust From the Booker Prize-shortlisted author of The Trees James is an enthralling and ferociously funny novel that leaves an indelible mark, forcing us to see Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn in a wholly new and transformative light. The Mississippi River, 1861. When the enslaved Jim overhears that he is about to be sold to a new owner in New Orleans and separated from his wife and daughter forever, he decides to hide on nearby Jackson's Island until he can formulate a plan. Meanwhile, Huck Finn has faked his own death to escape his violent father who recently returned to town. Thus begins a dangerous and transcendent journey by raft along the Mississippi River, toward the elusive promise of free states and beyond. As James and Huck begin to navigate the treacherous waters, each bend in the river holds the promise of both salvation and demise. With rumours of a brewing war, James must face the burden he carries: the family he is desperate to protect and the constant lie he must live. And together, the unlikely pair must face the most dangerous odyssey of them all . . . From the shadows of Huck Finn's mischievous spirit, Jim emerges to reclaim his voice, defying the conventions that have consigned him to the margins.
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Ikigai
Héctor García, Francesc Miralles · 2017
Discover the Japanese secret to a long and happy life with the internationally bestselling guide to ikigai - 'a refreshingly simple recipe for happiness' (Stylist Magazine) The people of Japan believe that everyone has an ikigai - a reason to jump out of bed each morning. And according to the residents of the Japanese island of Okinawa - the world's longest-living people - finding it is the key to a longer and more fulfilled life. Inspiring and comforting, this book will give you the life-changing tools to uncover your personal ikigai., It will show you how to leave urgency behind, find your purpose, nurture friendships and throw yourself into your passions. Bring meaning and joy to your every day with ikigai. 'Ikigai gently unlocks simple secrets we can all use to live long, meaningful, happy lives., Science-based studies weave beautifully into honest, straight-talking conversation you won't be able to put down. Warm, patient, and kind, this book pulls you gently along your own journey rather than pushing you from behind.' Neil Pasricha, bestselling author of The Happiness Equation
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Blue Sisters
Coco Mellors · 2024
From the bestselling author of Cleopatra and Frankenstein Blue Sisters tells the story of three exceptional - and exceptionally different - sisters as they return to their family home in New York from their respective lives in Paris, London and LA in the wake of the death of their beloved fourth sister. As they are reunited whilst attempting to cope with this terrible loss, they must navigate addiction, grief and ambition and learn what it takes to fall in love with life again.
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Here One Moment
Liane Moriarty · 2024
If you knew when you were going to die, what would you do differently? It all begins on a flight from Hobart to Sydney. The flight will be smooth. It will land safely. Everyone who gets on the plane will get off the plane. But almost all of them will be changed forever. Because on this ordinary flight, something extraordinary happens. 'A lady', unremarkable until she isn't, predicts how and when many of the passengers are going to die. For some, death is far in the future; for others, it is very close. A brilliantly constructed story that looks at free will and destiny, grief and love, and the endless struggle to maintain certainty and control in an uncertain world. Liane Moriarty is a modern-day Jane Austen who humorously skewers social mores while spinning a web of mystery and asking profound, universal questions. Praise for Liane Moriarty: 'Liane Moriarty produces novels that are miracles of structure as well as human insight' Sydney Morning Herald 'Moriarty is brilliant at her craft, all the time cranking up the suspense' The Age
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Caledonian Road
O'Hagan, Andrew · 2024
From the author of Mayflies, an irresistible, unputdownable, state-of-the-nation novel - the story of one man's epic fall from grace. From the author of Mayflies, an irresistible, unputdownable, state-of-the-nation novel - the story of one man's epic fall from grace.May 2021. London.Campbell Flynn - art historian and celebrity intellectual - is entering the empire of middle age. Fuelled by an appetite for admiration and the finer things, controversy and novelty, he doesn't take people half as seriously as they take themselves. Which will prove the first of his huge mistakes. The second? Milo Manghasa, his beguiling and provocative student. Milo inhabits a more precarious world, has experiences and ideas which excite his teacher. He also has a plan.Over the course of an incendiary year, a web of crimes and secrets and scandals will be revealed, and Campbell Flynn may not be able to protect himself from the shattering exposure of all his privilege really involves. But then, he always knew: when his life came tumbling down, it would occur in public.'A brilliant state-of-the-nation novel that pulls down the facades of high society, and knocks over the 'good liberal' house-of-cards. O'Hagan is not only a peerless chronicler of our times, but has other gifts - of generosity, humour and tenderness - which make this novel an utter joy to read.' Monica Ali
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Dusk
Robbie Arnott · 2024
In the distant highlands, a puma named Dusk is killing shepherds. Down in the lowlands, twins Iris and Floyd are out of work, money and friends. When they hear that a bounty has been placed on Dusk, they reluctantly decide to join the hunt. As they journey up into this wild, haunted country, they discover there's far more to the land and people of the highlands than they imagined. And as they close in on their prey, they're forced to reckon with conflicts both ancient and deeply personal.
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Nexus
Yuval Noah Harari · 2024
From renowned historian and #1 Sunday Times bestselling author Yuval Noah Harari comes the thrilling story of how information networks have made, and unmade, our world From renowned historian and #1 Sunday Times bestselling author Yuval Noah Harari comes the thrilling story of how information networks have made, and unmade, our world For the last 100,000 years, we Sapiens have accumulated enormous power. But despite all our discoveries, inventions and conquests, we now find ourselves in an existential crisis. The world is on the verge of ecological collapse. Misinformation abounds. And we are rushing headlong into the age of AI - a new information network that threatens to annihilate us. If we are so wise, why are we so self-destructive? NEXUS considers how the flow of information has shaped us, and our world. Taking us from the Stone Age through the Bible, early modern witch-hunts, Stalinism, Nazism and the resurgence of populism today, Yuval Noah Harari asks us to consider the complex relationship between information and truth, bureaucracy and mythology, wisdom and power. He explores how different societies and political systems have wielded information to achieve their goals, for good and ill. And he addresses the urgent choices we face as non-human intelligence threatens our very existence. Information is not the raw material of truth; neither is it a mere weapon. NEXUS explores the hopeful middle ground between these extremes, and of rediscovering our shared humanity.
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The Golden Road: How Ancient India Transformed the World
William Dalrymple · 2024
For most of its modern history, India was fated to be on the receiving end of cultural influence from other civilisations. But this isn't the complete story. A full millennium earlier, India's major cultural exports - religion, art, technology, astronomy, mathematics, medicine, language and literature - were shaping civilisations, travelling as far as Afghanistan in the West and Japan in the East. Out of India came pioneering merchants, astronomers and astrologers, scientists and mathematicians, surgeons and sculptors, as well as holy men, monks and missionaries. In The Golden Road, legendary historian William Dalrymple highlights India's oft-forgotten position as a crucial economic and civilisational hub at the heart of the ancient and early medieval history of Eurasia. From Angkor to Ayutthaya, The Golden Road traces the cultural flow of Indian religions, languages, artistic and architectural forms and mathematics throughout the world. In this groundbreaking tome, Dalrymple draws from a lifetime of scholarship to reinstate India as the great intellectual and philosophical superpower of ancient Asia.
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Days at the Morisaki Bookshop: The International Bestseller for lovers of Before the Coffee Gets Cold
Satoshi Yagisawa · 2023
The moving international sensation about new beginnings, human connection, and the joy of reading. Hidden in Jimbocho, Tokyo is a booklover's paradise. On a quiet corner in an old wooden building lies a shop filled with hundreds of second-hand books. Twenty-five-year-old Takako has never liked reading, although the Morisaki bookshop has been in her family for three generations. It is the pride and joy of her uncle Satoru, who has devoted his life to the bookshop since his wife Momoko left him five years earlier. When Takako's boyfriend reveals he's marrying someone else, she reluctantly accepts her eccentric uncle's offer to live rent-free in the tiny room above the shop. Hoping to nurse her broken heart in peace, Takako is surprised to encounter new worlds within the stacks of books lining the Morisaki bookshop. As summer fades to autumn, Satoru and Takako discover they have more in common than they first thought. The Morisaki bookshop has something to teach them both about life, love, and the healing power of books.
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Dog Trip Melbourne
O, Evi, Grune, Andrew · 2023
Rather than leaving your four-legged friend at home when seeking a nature adventure, Dog Trip Melbourne offers 52 getaways that both dogs and their people can enjoy, all within a 130 km radius of the CBD. Escape the urban chaos with sandy escapades at the beach, splash about in waterfalls or bound through tranquil coastal rainforests. Every adventure has been tested, photographed and given an enthusiastic paw of approval. Presented in a user-friendly format, the collection includes maps showing walking routes and facilities, on and off-leash information, and a guide to trip highlights. Fire up your adventurous spirit and get those tails wagging with Dog Trip Melbourne.
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Kairos
Jenny Erpenbeck · 2024
From an internationally acclaimed, multi award-winning author: this is a story of love and betrayal set in Berlin during the years before and after the fall of the Wall. Berlin. 11 July 1986. They meet by chance on a bus. She is a young student, he is older and married. Theirs is an intense and sudden attraction, fuelled by a shared passion for music and art, and heightened by the secrecy they must maintain. But when she strays for a single night he cannot forgive her and a dangerous crack forms between them, opening up a space for cruelty, punishment and the exertion of power. And the world around them is changing too: as the GDR begins to crumble, so too do all the old certainties and the old loyalties, ushering in a new era whose great gains also involve profound loss. From a prize-winning German writer, this is the intimate and devastating story of the path of two lovers through the ruins of a relationship, set against the backdrop of a seismic period in European history.
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Atomic Habits: Tiny Changes, Remarkable Results
James Clear · 2018
atomic habit (aAtomAic habAit) n. A small habit with big results. People say when you want to change your life, you need to think big- swap job, move house, change partner. But they're wrong. World-renowned habits expert James Clear has discovered a completely different way to transform your behaviour. He knows that lasting change comes from the compound effect of hundreds of tiny decisions - doing two push-ups a day, waking up five minutes early, or holding a single short phone call. He calls them atomic habits. In Atomic Habits, Clear delves into cutting-edge psychology to explain why your brain can amplify these small changes into huge consequences. He uncovers a handful of simple life hacks (the forgotten art of Habit Stacking, or the unexpected power of the Two Minute Rule), to show how you too turn minuscule shifts in behaviour into life-transforming outcomes. And he reveals a simple four-stage method that will let you build atomic habits into your day-to-day routine, starting now. These nuclear changes will have an explosive effect on your career, your relationships and your life.
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Good Cooking Every Day
Julia Busuttil Nishimura · 2024
'Every meal is something to celebrate - a casual gathering with friends, a weeknight dinner, a long birthday lunch in the garden. It doesn't matter what the occasion, there is an unspoken joy in sharing food with others.' Julia Busuttil Nishimura is one of Australia's best-loved food personalities, renowned for her generous, uncomplicated, seasonal cooking. Good Cooking Every Day is all about simple food and creating memorable meals. This collection of brilliant recipes includes a guide to creating menus for any occasion, from a celebration of summer produce to pure comfort food in cooler weather, a simple family dinner to a relaxed lunch with friends. Julia pairs ingredients in harmonious and delicious ways, with recipes for every season. This is everyday eating at its very best.
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Beatrix Bakes: Another Slice
Natalie Paull · 2024
Sweet-toothed superstar and bestselling baker Natalie Paull returns with Beatrix Bakes: Another Slice, an all-new compilation of colourful, creative recipes to delight fans and newcomers alike. These are the cakes and desserts Nat has loved to eat since closing her cult cafe and bakery in inner Melbourne in 2022. By popular demand, the book includes legendary bakes that were not in the hit original Beatrix Bakes (hello lemon cream tart and chocolate sour cream layer cake). Discover recipes for irresistible cookies and tray bakes, cakes, tarts, pies (and a strudel), doughs and epic day-off baking projects to fill your weekend. It also features Beatrix baseix - think cream, custard and ganache - fruity bits and cake-cessories (honeycomb, toffee, streusel and spice), as well as the beloved Adaptrix tips for handy substitutions, all served in Nat's signature style: warm, encouraging and firm when required. Beatrix Bakes: Another Slice is an essential companion for anyone who always leaves room for dessert.
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The Creative Act
Rick Rubin · 2023
From the legendary music producer, a master at helping people connect with the wellsprings of their creativity, comes a beautifully crafted book many years in the making that offers that same deep wisdom to all of us. Many famed music producers are known for a particular sound that has its day and then ages out. Rick Rubin is known for something else: creating a space where artists of all different genres and traditions can home in on who they really are and what they really offer. He has made a practice of helping people transcend their self-imposed expectations in order to reconnect with a state of innocence from which the surprising becomes inevitable. Over the years, as he has thought deeply about where creativity comes from and where it doesn't, he has learned that being an artist isn't about your specific output; it's about your relationship to the world. Creativity has a place in everyone's life, and everyone can make that place larger. In fact, there are few more important responsibilities. The Creative Act is a beautiful and generous course of study that illuminates the path of the artist as a road we all can follow. It distils the wisdom gleaned from a lifetime's work into a luminous reading experience that puts the power to create moments - and lifetimes - of exhilaration and transcendence within closer reach for all of us.
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Lessons in Chemistry
Bonnie Garmus · 2023
The sensational Number One debut of 2022, now in paperback. The major bestseller featuring the uncompromising, unconventional Elizabeth Zott - the most exciting new character in fiction. THE #1 SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER and NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER 'Sparky, rip-roaring, funny, with big-hearted fully formed, loveable characters' SUNDAY TIMES 'The most charming, life-enhancing novel I've read in ages. Strongly recommend' INDIA KNIGHT 'Laugh-out-loud funny and brimming with life, generosity and courage' RACHEL JOYCE 'A novel that sparks joy with every page' ELIZABETH DAY Your ability to change everything - including yourself - starts here Chemist Elizabeth Zott is not your average woman. In fact, Elizabeth Zott would be the first to point out that there is no such thing. But it's the early 1960s and her all-male team at Hastings Research Institute take a very unscientific view of equality. Except for one- Calvin Evans, the lonely, brilliant, Nobel-prize nominated grudge-holder who falls in love with - of all things - her mind. True chemistry results. Like science, life is unpredictable. Which is why a few years later, Elizabeth Zott finds herself not only a single mother, but the reluctant star of America's most beloved cooking show, Supper at Six. Elizabeth's unusual approach to cooking ('combine one tablespoon acetic acid with a pinch of sodium chloride') proves revolutionary. But as her following grows, not everyone is happy. Because as it turns out, Elizabeth Zott isn't just teaching women to cook. She's daring them to change the status quo. SOON TO BE A MAJOR APPLE TV SERIAL, STARRING BRIE LARSON 'I loved Lessons in Chemistry and am devastated to have finished it!' NIGELLA LAWSON 'Elizabeth Zott is an iconic heroine - a feminist who refuses to be quashed, a mother who believes that her child is a person to behold, rather than to mould, and who will leave you, and the lens through which you see the world, quite changed' PANDORA SYKES 'It's the world versus Elizabeth Zott, and I had no trouble choosing a side. A page-turning and highly satisfying tale- zippy, zesty, and Zotty' MAGGIE SHIPSTEAD, author of GREAT CIRCLE
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The Thursday Murder Club
Richard Osman · 2021
In a peaceful retirement village, four unlikely friends meet up once a week to investigate unsolved murders. But when a brutal killing takes place on their very doorstep, the Thursday Murder Club find themselves in the middle of their first live case. Elizabeth, Joyce, Ibrahim and Ron might be pushing eighty but they still have a few tricks up their sleeves. Can our unorthodox but brilliant gang catch the killer before it's too late?
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The Chairman's Lounge
Joe Aston · 2024
From the must-read journalist on how power, money and influence work in this country, the full story of how one of the nation's favourite brands brought itself to ground. Joe Aston's incredible ability to break a story made his AFR column 'Rear Window' essential reading about how power, money and influence work in this country. Famously, he exposed the ethical failings of Qantas, resulting in the resignation of the airline's chairman and early retirement of its CEO, Alan Joyce. With fresh interviews and revelations, written with Aston's trademark wit and insight, The Chairman's Lounge takes us behind the scenes as crisis after crisis hit the national carrier. The result is the definitive, compelling story of how Qantas was brought to ground and who did it. It is a parable of our times.
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Fourth Wing
Rebecca Yarros · 2023
Dragons, war and Hunger Games-esque trials. Fourth Wing is a high-stakes, enemies-to-lovers fantasy romance perfect for fans of Leigh Bardugo, Sarah J Maas and dark academia. THE INSTANT SUNDAY TIMES AND NUMBER ONE GLOBAL BESTSELLING PHENOMENON! DON'T MISS OUT ON THE SERIES THAT EVERYONE CAN'T STOP TALKING ABOUT: 'This book contains an addictive, drug like essence that will make you relinquish all responsibility until the very last word. Do not say I didn't warn you' Glamour 'I didn't sleep, I didn't eat, and when I finished, I had the overwhelming urge to just start it all over again' ***** READER REVIEW 'If I can convince you to read one book I recommend it would be this one' ***** READER REVIEW 'You know when you finish a book, and it leaves an ache in your chest because it was so good, and now it's over? That's exactly how I feel after finishing Fourth Wing' ***** READER REVIEW Welcome to the brutal and elite world of Basgiath War College, where everyone has an agenda, and every night could be your last . . . Twenty-year-old Violet Sorrengail was supposed to enter the Scribe Quadrant, living a quiet life among books and history. Now, the commanding general - also known as her tough-as-talons mother - has ordered Violet to join the hundreds of candidates striving to become the elite of Navarre: dragon riders. But when you're smaller than everyone else and your body is brittle, death is only a heartbeat away . . . because dragons don't bond to 'fragile' humans. They incinerate them. With fewer dragons willing to bond than cadets, most would kill Violet to better their own chances of success. The rest would kill her just for being her mother's daughter - like Xaden Riorson, the most powerful and ruthless wingleader in the Riders Quadrant. She'll need every edge her wits can give her just to see the next sunrise. Yet, with every day that passes, the war outside grows more deadly, the kingdom's protective wards are failing, and the death toll continues to rise. Even worse, Violet begins to suspect leadership is hiding a terrible secret. Alliances will be forged. Lives will be lost. Traitors will become allies . . . or even lovers. But sleep with one eye open because once you enter, there are only two ways out: graduate or die. ------ OVER A QUARTER OF A MILLION READERS HAVE ALREADY GIVEN FOURTH WING FIVE STARS. ARE YOU READY TO ENTER THE WORLD OF BASGIATH WAR COLLEGE?
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The Courage to be Disliked
Ichiro Kishimi, Fumitake Koga · 2017
A single book can change your life. Already an enormous bestseller in Asia, with more than 3 million copies sold, The Courage to be Disliked demonstrates how to unlock the power within yourself to be the person you truly want to be. Using the theories of Alfred Adler, one of the three giants of 19th century psychology alongside Freud and Jung, it follows an illuminating conversation between a philosopher and a young man. The philosopher explains to his pupil how each of us is able to determine our own lives, free of the shackles of past experiences, doubts and the expectations of others. It's a way of thinking that's deeply liberating, allowing us to develop the courage to change, and to ignore the limitations that we and those around us can place on ourselves. The result is a book that is both highly accessible and profound in its importance. Millions have already read and benefited from its wisdom. Now that The Courage to be Disliked has been published for the first time in English, so can you.
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RecipeTin Eats Dinner
Nagi Maehashi · 2022
150 dinner recipes. Fail-proof. Delicious. Addictive. The food you want to cook, eat and share, night after night. Through her phenomenally popular online food site, RecipeTin Eats, Nagi Maehashi talks to millions of people a year who tell her about the food they love. Now, in her first cookbook, Nagi brings us the ultimate curation of new and favourite RecipeTin Eats recipes - from comfort food (yes, cheese galore), to fast and easy food for weeknights, Mexican favourites, hearty dinner salads, Asian soups and noodles, and special treats for festive occasions. Featuring a photo and how-to video for every recipe (follow the QR code), readily available ingredients, Nagi's famously helpful notes, and Dozer, Australia's best-loved food tester, this is a kitchen-shelf must have for the novice cook, the expert seeking to perfect technique (straight to the Beef Wellington!), and everyone in between.
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The City and Its Uncertain Walls
Haruki Murakami · 2024
The breathtaking new novel about the boundaries between worlds and individuals, from the internationally bestselling author of 1Q84. A novel about the porous boundary between the real and shadow worlds. After losing his beloved as a teenager, the narrator finds his way to the Town, a mysterious place where he finds work as a Dream Reader in the library. Back in the real world as an adult he tries to recapture his time in the Town by taking a job as a librarian in a remote location in Fukushima province, where he takes over the job from a ghost. When a boy, M, who visits the library every day, vanishes, the boundaries between spatial and temporal realities, and between individuals, seems to have been breached. A novel about the barriers, imaginary and real, that we put up between and within ourselves.
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Stone Yard Devotional
Charlotte Wood · 2023
A woman abandons her city life and marriage to return to the place she grew up, finding solace in a small religious community hidden away on the stark plains of the Monaro. She does not believe in God, doesn't know what prayer is, and finds herself living this strange, reclusive life almost by accident. As she gradually adjusts to the rhythms of monastic life, she ruminates on her childhood in the nearby town. She finds herself turning again and again to thoughts of her mother, whose early death she can't forget. Disquiet interrupts this secluded life with three visitations. First comes a terrible mouse plague, each day signalling a new battle against the rising infestation. Second is the return of the skeletal remains of a sister who left the community decades before to minister to deprived women in Thailand - then disappeared, presumed murdered. Finally, a troubling visitor to the monastery pulls the narrator further back into her past. With each of these disturbing arrivals, the woman faces some deep questions. Can a person be truly good? What is forgiveness? Is loss of hope a moral failure? And can the business of grief ever really be finished? A meditative and deeply moving novel from the Stella Prize-winning author of The Natural Way of Things and The Weekend.
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Theory & Practice
Michelle de Kretser · 2024
‘One of the living masters of the art of fiction.’ Max Porter ‘Michelle de Kretser is to my mind one of the finest writers alive and Theory and Practice a lightning strike of a book.’ Ali SmithOne of the most anticipated literary releases of the year, this gripping novel changes the game on what fiction can be and do.
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Salad for Days: Breezy ways with veg, all year round
Alice Zaslavsky · 2024
Turn everyday veg into something extraordinary, with this collection of the tastiest and most satisfying salad recipes from the Queen of Veg, Alice Zaslavsky. 'Stunning, fresh, luscious!' Yotam Ottolenghi 'An exciting and enticing triumph. I predict every reader will head to the kitchen to start roasting, grilling, tossing and slicing vegetables, herbs and fruits. This book is a winner!' Stephanie Alexander You may have heard it said: 'You don't win friends with salad.' Well, I'm here to tell you that you do! When you cart a kaleidoscopic container-load to a friend's barbecue; when you plonk a bowl of zippy greens down alongside grand mains to cut through and cleanse the palate; when you toss pantry ingredients together for lazy bowl-food on the couch. Times have changed and salads have had a glow-up. This book is your guide to making every day a salad day, and every meal a moment to get your veg on. For warmer days, there are salads designed to refresh and replenish, using juicy, sun-drenched ingredients and the brightest of colours. For cooler days, there are salads that will sustain, nourish and ground, giving hearty food a counterpoint so that you finish the meal feeling better than you started. Salad for Days is both a seasonal reference guide and a daily roster to boost your repertoire, packed with inspiration (come through, Cauliflower tabouli with lemony tahini and pomegranate) as well as food that comforts (hellooo, Honeyed butternut risoni salad with marinated feta). It also includes an indispensable 'what to make when' list for using up particular veg, as well as a huge dressings inspo index to return to time and again. With this book, you'll have salad for days ... and days ... and days ...
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What Happened to Nina?
Dervla McTiernan · 2024
A good mother protects her son. No matter what he's done. The unmissable new thriller from the no.1 bestselling author of The Murder Rule and The Good Turn. Nina and Simon are the perfect couple. Young, fun and deeply in love. Until they leave for a weekend at his family's cabin in Vermont, and only Simon comes home.WHAT HAPPENED TO NINA?Nobody knows. Simon's explanation about what happened in their last hours together doesn't add up. Nina's parents push the police for answers, and Simon's parents rush to protect him. They hire expensive lawyers and a PR firm that quickly ramps up a vicious, nothing-is-off-limits media campaign.HOW FAR WILL HIS FAMILY GO TO KEEP HIM SAFE?Soon, facts are lost in a swirl of accusation and counter-accusation. Everyone chooses a side, and the story goes viral, fuelled by armchair investigators and wild conspiracy theories and illustrated with pretty pictures taken from Nina's social media accounts. Journalists descend on their small Vermont town, followed by a few obsessive 'fans.'HOW FAR WILL HER FAMILY GO TO GET TO THE TRUTH?Nina's family is under siege, but they never lose sight of the only thing that really matters - finding their daughter. Out-gunned by Simon's wealthy, powerful family, Nina's parents recognize that if playing by the rules won't get them anywhere, it's time to break them.Praise for Dervla McTiernan:'An uncommonly fine mystery writer' New York Times'McTiernan's in the top rank of crime writers' Chris Hammer'A born storyteller' Val McDermid'A simply brilliant writer' Don Winslow
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Everything I Know About Love
Dolly Alderton · 2019
When it comes to the trials and triumphs of becoming a grown up, journalist Dolly Alderton has seen and tried it all. In her memoir, she vividly recounts falling in love, wrestling with self-sabotage, finding a job, throwing a socially disastrous Rod-Stewart themed house party, getting drunk, getting dumped, realising that Ivan from the corner shop is the only man you've ever been able to rely on, and finding that that your mates are always there at the end of every messy night out. Glittering, with wit and insight, heart and humour, this is a book about the struggles of early adulthood in all its grubby, hopeful uncertainty.
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You Don't Have to Have a Dream
Tim Minchin · 2024
Charlie Mackesy meets Kurt Vonnegut, in the first non-fiction book from Tim Minchin- a beautifully idiosyncratic celebration of life, art, success, kindness, love and thriving in a meaningless universe, drawn from three iconic graduation speeches. 'Life will sometimes seem long and tough. And you will sometimes be happy and sometimes sad. And then you'll be old. And then you'll be dead. There is only one sensible thing to do with this empty existence, and that is- fill it.' A book for the science-loving reality-romantic in all of us, You Don't Have to Have a Dream offers Tim Minchin's inimitable thoughts and advice on life, art, success, kindness, love, and thriving in a meaningless universe. Drawn from three of his iconic commencement addresses, and beautifully designed with specially commissioned illustrations throughout, it's a rallying cry for creativity, critical thinking, and compassion in our daily lives. It's never too late to put something beautiful out into the world.
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The Vegetarian
Han Kang · 2016
Yeong-hye and her husband are ordinary people. He is an office worker with moderate ambitions and mild manners; she is an uninspired but dutiful wife. The acceptable flatline of their marriage is interrupted when Yeong-hye, seeking a more 'plant-like' existence, decides to become a vegetarian, prompted by grotesque recurring nightmares., In South Korea, where vegetarianism is almost unheard-of and societal mores are strictly obeyed, Yeong-hye's decision is a shocking act of subversion. Her passive rebellion manifests in ever more bizarre and frightening forms, leading her bland husband to self-justified acts of sexual sadism. His cruelties drive her towards attempted suicide and hospitalisation., She unknowingly captivates her sister's husband, a video artist. She becomes the focus of his increasingly erotic and unhinged artworks, while spiralling further and further into her fantasies of abandoning her fleshly prison and becoming - impossibly, ecstatically - a tree. Fraught, disturbing and beautiful, The Vegetarian is a novel about modern day South Korea, but also a novel about shame, desire and our faltering attempts to understand others, from one imprisoned body to another.
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The Men Who Killed the News
Eric Beecher · 2024
Crikey owner and ex-News Corp and Fairfax editor lifts the lid on the abuse of power by media moguls - from William Randolph Hearst to Elon Musk - and on his own unique experience of working for (and being sued by) the Murdochs. What's gone wrong with our media? Eric Beecher's answer is: its owners, many of the biggest of them at least. They have exploited their privileged position in society to distort journalism and accumulate vast wealth and power. Few people know the media like Eric Beecher. He has worked at Fairfax and News Corp, founded and sold Text Media, and is currently the biggest shareholder in the news website Crikey. He's been journalist, editor and media proprietor, and has the rare distinction of having both worked for and recently been sued by (unsuccessfully) the Murdochs. This is a book only he could write: a portrait of the rise of media moguls over the past two centuries, and an analysis of how they have destroyed news journalism and undermined truth by using the shield of the 'freedom of the press' to cover their quest for personal power. In a year that will see Fox News and Donald Trump fight an election, no book could be more timely and important in our understanding of how the media has become an agent of misinformation. The Men Who Killed the News is deeply informed by Beecher's own experience and delivers engaging first-hand insights. His in-depth research takes us from Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst - the first sensationalist newspaper owners in the US, who made fortunes and established dynasties - to their UK successors Lords Northcliffe and Beaverbrook; contemporary media dictators like Conrad Black, Robert Maxwell and Rupert Murdoch; and on to Musk and Zuckerberg, the latest, tech-inflected manifestation of the mogul. In 2024, more people will vote in elections than ever before: never has the role of the media been more virulent and of more urgent interest. Eric Beecher is the perfect guide to understanding how media power works: the players, the techniques, the strategies, the behind-the-scenes machinations.
